GTM Vault

Fourteen percent of AI agents go live with full approval. The rest are running anyway — chaining tasks, spawning sub-agents, crossing system boundaries at machine speed with more access than any human employee would be granted. The identity stack can tell you who logged in. It cannot tell you whether the agent spawned from that login should be querying that database right now. Mark Van Oppen is CR...

Someone gave every rep a Claude license. Every team built its own ChatGPT project. Now the same question gets two different answers depending on who you ask. One customer had a rep pitch a product line that did not exist because ChatGPT made up SKUs the company had never sold. The model was not the problem. The agent was not the problem. The architecture underneath was. Alex Bilmes built Endgame t...

The ad shipped. The creative looked great. The campaign went live. Performance stalled anyway. Not because targeting failed, not because the budget was wrong. The team scaled ad volume faster than its ability to learn. Most performance marketing failures are not media problems. They are feedback loop failures between creativity, data, and iteration. Most companies have not absorbed this yet. In th...

Most demo experiences are still screenshots in a slide deck or a 45 minute call where the prospect watches someone else click. Both are artifacts of an era where the sales motion carried the product. Neither survives in a market where buyers self-serve, shortlist in private, and decide before a human ever enters the loop. The demo stopped being a sales meeting. Most companies have not absorbed thi...

Most analytics fail before the first query runs. Not because the data is bad. Because the definitions underneath it never agreed. The CRM says one thing. Billing says another. Product analytics says a third. Every dashboard built on top inherits the divergence. The founder picks the number that matches their intuition and calls it a decision. In this episode of GTM Vault, Rick Koleta sits down wit...

Most go-to-market teams track metrics that were never designed to produce financial truth. The CRM was built for sales activity, not financial outcomes. Every metric stacked on top of it, from pipeline coverage to weighted forecast, inherits that original misalignment. Marketing reports MQLs trending up. Sales reports meetings booked ahead of target. Finance reports revenue is flat. Four functions...

Most go-to-market teams still treat enablement as a content and training problem. But the real constraint inside modern revenue organizations is not knowledge. It is execution. In this episode of GTM Vault , Rick Koleta sits down with Sreedhar Peddineni , Co-Founder of Gainsight and Co-Founder & CEO of GTM Buddy, to explain why the enablement category is hitting its architectural limits and wh...

Most go-to-market teams are still organized for a world where coordination was the bottleneck, but that world no longer exists. In this episode of GTM Vault, Rick Koleta sits down with Annette Sung, CEO and Co-Founder of Amdahl, to explain why GTM is no longer best understood as a set of teams or functions, but as an execution system. As AI absorbs more execution work, the constraint shifts from c...

Founders don’t think about debt when things are going well. They think about it when urgency forces the decision. In this episode of GTM Vault, Rick Koleta sits down with Michael Wallace, CEO of TIMIA Capital, to explain why debt fails when it is reactive and why disciplined operators design capital long before something breaks. Most founders assume debt is a last resort, something to reach for on...

Revenue does not usually fail at the close. It fails quietly after growth has already happened. In this episode of GTM Vault , Rick Koleta sits down with Mark Walker , CEO of Nue , to explain why revenue breaks when pricing models outgrow the systems running them. Most teams assume stalled revenue means a sales problem or an execution gap. In reality, the failure is structural. Pricing uncertainty...

Pricing is not a finance line item. It is a go-to-market system decision that determines who you can sell to, how sales sell, and whether revenue compounds or quietly leaks. In this episode of GTM Vault, Rick Koleta sits down with Roee Hartuv, Senior Pricing Advisor and Head of GTM Expertise at Willingness to Pay, to unpack why so many GTM transformations fail even when teams execute harder. The p...

What actually scales enterprise revenue when complexity exposes weak GTM systems? In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta sits down with Rik Schrader, Chief Revenue Officer at GreyOrange, to break down what holds up when theory stops working and reality shows up. Rik brings more than three decades of experience building and rebuilding enterprise go to market systems across IBM, NCR, Honeywe...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta speaks with Vignesh Ravichandran, founder of MyClone, about why AI-native GTM is fundamentally an infrastructure problem, not a tooling one. We dig into what breaks when teams layer AI on top of fragmented systems, and why identity, context, and data graphs matter more than prompts or point solutions. Vignesh shares how modern GTM systems should be de...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta speaks with Jason Patel, co-founder and CEO of Open Forge AI, about why generative engines are becoming the new gatekeepers of discovery. We dig into how GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, reshapes brand visibility inside AI answers and how LLMs interpret companies through entities, knowledge graphs, and machine-readable content. Jason breaks down t...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta unpacks the hidden pattern behind companies that scale predictably. We break down why clarity, alignment and operating rhythm beat raw activity, and how elite CROs create systems where execution becomes consistent across Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. Amber reveals her AAA diagnostic for the first 30 to 60 days, how to remove friction from fas...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta explores how predictive enablement becomes the hidden engine behind scalable revenue teams. We dig into frameworks that align marketing, sales, and customer success—covering the shift from reactive training to forward-looking skill-flows, how revenue ops becomes an intelligence layer, and why enabling your team predictively isn’t optional—it’s the lev...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta speaks with Michele Shepard - Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse - about scaling predictive revenue systems and turning AI into an intelligence layer for enterprise growth. Michele shares her frameworks for building repeatable GTM systems that align people, process, and technology - including the 30-60 Framework for new CROs, the Opportunity Scorecard,...

In this episode of GTM Vault, host Rick Koleta speaks with Harsha Gaddipati — founder & CEO of Slashy.ai (YC S25) — about building AI that connects reasoning with real-world execution. We explore how Slashy’s agents automate complex workflows across sales, marketing, and operations — turning intent into action without human handoffs. Harsha shares his framework for “AI that does,” insights int...

In this episode of GTM Vault , host Rick Koleta speaks with Jin Kim , founder & CEO of Miracle — a platform built to bring operational transparency , real-time tracking , and unified data integration to clinical trials. Miracle helps biopharma teams break down data silos, forecast enrollment, monitor sites live, and ensure accountability across vendors and stakeholders — all while maintaining...

Customer support is broken — and reply-only bots aren’t enough. In this episode, Rick Koleta sits down with Rafael Broshi, co-founder and CEO of Notch, to unpack how resolution-first AI agents are transforming CX. Unlike traditional chatbots or GPT wrappers, Notch agents actually resolve issues end-to-end, delivering 40x faster response times, 80 percent lower cost-to-serve, and measurable lifts i...

In this episode of GTM Vault , Ben Collins, co-founder and CEO of Woz (YC Winter ’25), reveals how AI agents are replacing the need for technical co-founders—launching software businesses in days, not months. Ben shares the story behind Woz, explains how AI-native tools mimic engineering and product teams, and why the human “last mile” remains critical for building trust. He also explores how AI s...

Discover how modern GTM engines evolve from product-led growth to sales-assisted—and why speed is the unlock for AI adoption—in this episode of GTM Vault featuring Branca Ballot, VP of Marketing at Glide. Branca shares how her team grew signups 5x, increased sales-assisted ACV 10x, and launched 5 AI agents in just 40 days. She unpacks the myths around PLG companies adding sales, why RevOps acceler...

Discover how affiliate-led GTM is evolving—and why it's becoming one of the most overlooked growth engines in modern go-to-market—in this episode of GTM Vault featuring Ian Brodie, CEO of Levanta. A repeat founder and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, Ian previously co-founded Grovia (acquired in under two years) and led GTM at Acceleration Partners. Ian shares how Levanta helps Amazon sellers connect with...

Discover why traditional funnels are collapsing—and learn how to rebuild them around buyers, not blind automation—in this episode of GTM Vault featuring Santosh Sharan, co‑founder and CEO of Zeer AI. Building on his experience scaling Apollo.io, Retention.com, ZoomInfo—and advising Gong, LeadIQ, Lusha, and ContactOut—Santosh dives deep into the shift from volume‑heavy outbound to high‑trust, buyer...

Vijay Rajendran — executive coach, venture builder, and author of The Funding Framework — joins GTM Vault to explore what it really takes to grow from founder to fundable CEO in today’s fast-moving startup landscape. Vijay has helped founders raise capital in 80+ countries, led Portfolio Value at 500 Global, and now coaches high-growth leaders on how to lead with clarity, raise with confidence, an...